Two Outcomes, Similar Paths
March 5, 2015 10:12 AM   Subscribe

Two Outcomes, Similar Paths: Radical Muslim and Neo-Nazi. "Religious ideology plays a central role in the radicalization of young Muslim Europeans currently being lured to join the Islamic State or kill in the group’s name at home. But the psychological process underlying radicalization is remarkably universal, terrorism experts say." (previously)
posted by twirlip (30 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
The ideologies that once motivated Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Orell could hardly be more different. Yet strip away ideology and what emerges are two strikingly similar tales of radicalization [and] militancy [...]

This is exactly what I've been saying for years - it's not one or another ideology that's the problem, it is radicalization that's the problem. For Mr. Ahmed it was Islam, for Mr. Orell it was Neo-Naziism - for other people it's being a Republican or a Democrat or an anarchist or a libertarian or a Jew or a Catholic or a feminist or a mens-rights-activist or a Red Sox fan or a lover of chocolate ice cream; in all cases it's the radicalization of that idea that's more at play at making them into jerks.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:30 AM on March 5, 2015 [11 favorites]


And the reason I believe it's so important to point this out is because if we focus on the ideologies, then we are a whole bunch of little groups pointing at each other and saying "stop it!" "no, YOU stop it!" but if we focus on the radicalization itself, then all of the non-radical whoevers can meld into one HUGE group that can point at the radical whoevers and say "okay, YOU stop it!"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:32 AM on March 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


“a mens-rights-activist or a Red Sox fan”

That's way over the line and unnecessary in order to make your point. To conflate the weirdo mens-rights people with simpleton baseball fans, who outside of the friendly confines are virtually harmless, as a premise to your argument is trolling at best.
posted by jsavimbi at 10:41 AM on March 5, 2015


This is probably just a semantic issue but I don't think it's "radicalization" that is the problem as per the definition found here:
"Radicalization (or radicalisation) is a process by which an individual or group comes to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that (1) reject or undermine the status quo or (2) reject and/or undermine contemporary ideas and expressions of freedom of choice."

I think it's the hatred and the desire for a worldview that permits violence toward innocent people for reasons that do not fit into ethics of harms principles or actual self defense issues.

I think it's when ideology becomes separate from harms principles and human welfare and begins to reinforce self interest and us vs them attitudes rather than a us AND them attitude.

Radicals have done great things in the world- when they serve compassion and challenge the status quo on those grounds they become heros recognizing for standing up against brutality andwrong action that society was perpetuating as a state of beings.

When they are serving violence, hatred, and destruction of people who constitute no actual threat to anyone- they become incredibly dangerous.

I like this written by Ali A Rizvi- a focus on the CONTENT of what a person is being extreme about rather than attacking "extremism" as some form of innately bad force:
"I also understand that extremism in any ideology isn't a distortion of that ideology. It is an informed, steadfast adherence to its fundamentals, hence the term "fundamentalism." When you think of a left-wing extremist, do you think of a greedy capitalist? Would you imagine a right-wing extremist to be dedicated to government-funded social welfare programs? The "extremists" and strict followers of the Jain faith, which values the life of every being, including insects, don't kill more than their average co-religionists. Instead, they avoid eating foods stored overnight so as not to kill even the microorganisms that may have collected in the meantime. In a true religion of peace, the "extremists" would be nonviolent pacifists to an extreme (and perhaps annoying) degree, not the opposite."
posted by xarnop at 10:42 AM on March 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


Back in the early 1950's Eric Hoffer wrote a book entitled The True Believer. It touched on many of these topics. If you are generally interested in this area I strongly recommend it.
posted by mygoditsbob at 10:45 AM on March 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


One pioneering program in Denmark treats onetime fighters not as potential terrorists but as wayward youths.

"Sure, I advocated terror. Even genocide. It was youthful indiscretion. I wouldn't randomly bomb people now or systematically execute undesirables. That's silly. So silly! I can't believe I said that stuff."

I'm not sure about what to do with western kids who turn to radical Islam. Maybe ship them off to Waziristan to learn about cholera and deadly snakes.

As for the fascists, I don't think there's a way to improve on Soviet methods for dealing with them.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:45 AM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


That's way over the line and unnecessary in order to make your point. To conflate the weirdo mens-rights people with simpleton baseball fans, who outside of the friendly confines are virtually harmless, as a premise to your argument is trolling at best.

No, it absolutely makes my point - which is that there are even radical idiots among "simpleton baseball fans", and that it is the radical activity that makes them jerks, not the fact that they're baseball fans.

You missed that I wasn't targeting baseball fans. You missed that i was targeting radicalization. So, if I were to hear about a bunch of Yankee fans who beat the crap out of a Red Sox fan after a game, it wouldn't be fair of me to dismiss all baseball fans as hoodlums - because baseball isn't what made them commit that crime, it was their own "my team or else" mindset that made them do that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:48 AM on March 5, 2015 [8 favorites]


I hope Exit has or acquires somebody who can talk to young men about being MRAs. MRAs have already had casualties.

Young people in these situations are most vulnerable to an appeal of lordliness, of being royalty in exile. It's amazing to me that ISIS is drawing young girls from relative privilege with this appeal. To clean the guns of a certified jihadi and wipe his children's backsides is apparently that much better than the life they think they face. It would take a very specially trained and experienced professional to understand that.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:55 AM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure about what to do with western kids who turn to radical Islam. Maybe ship them off to Waziristan to learn about cholera and deadly snakes.

Uh, they're shipping themselves off these days. Voluntarily. Their families are not thrilled, to say the least.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:13 AM on March 5, 2015


Really interesting article.

To add one more, I've also been struck at the similarities between Maoist guerrillas and Islamists. Both reject the modern world completely, and both have no problems resorting to violence to destroy the modern world.

I also thought the article elided over one disturbing (to me) trend: the number of Western women who are also radicalized Islamists. They don't seem to fit the 'angry and alienated white guy' mode that the article describes for the neo-nazis and Islamists.
posted by kanewai at 11:15 AM on March 5, 2015


kanewai, I'd say it's a touch of hybristophilia combined with the typical teenage impulse to say, well if you think I'm so bad then just look at how bad I can be. See here ("'If they think I’m a terrorist, I’ll give them something to think I am,' Conley allegedly told police.") And of course, the endless impulsivity available to the underformed teenage brain.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:25 AM on March 5, 2015


I don't think this analogy works.

Joining ISIS or the Taliban is a sound move for a revolutionary. They are substantial military movements which govern significant territory; they proudly champion, if with contemporary variation, long-standing ethno-religious ideologies and interests with many adherents and beneficiaries; and they are considerably more likely than not to develop into significant and permanent political players in their regions.

Becoming a young neo-fascist is a demonstration of a rather perverted magical thinking. Neo-fascism is a strain of sloganeering which governs nothing and no one; neo-fascists champion, with various degrees of shame-faced emendation, an ideology which rose to consequence in the early 1930s and was utterly annihilated less than 15 years later; with minimal mass support and zero present or possible elite support, their prospects for any future growth are almost nil.
posted by MattD at 11:28 AM on March 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Radicals have done great things in the world

I can't agree more with this.

I'm constantly having to deal with people who conflate passion for something positive with passion for something negative not because they see the content but because they consider getting worked up as being something bad.

It's tiring and it makes me lose respect for otherwise good people.
posted by Fuka at 11:29 AM on March 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


It is necessary to understand that radicalization is a phenomenon which is separate from the "good", "bad", "harmful", "harmless", etc. qualities of any particular radical belief or project in question.

Tangentially related: Chris Morris's observation that terrorist cells had the same interpersonal dynamics as five-a-side football leagues.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:29 AM on March 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Or, put another way, a returned ISIS fighter sitting in a German jail now has a fair chance of sitting in a Parliament in the Middle East (or, Germany, for that matter) in 20 years. In 20 years, Andres Brevik will still be in prison.
posted by MattD at 11:30 AM on March 5, 2015


> Becoming a young neo-fascist is a demonstration of a rather perverted magical thinking.

But people who take this path don't think this; they believe they are revolutionaries.
posted by rtha at 11:37 AM on March 5, 2015


A person growing up within the Taliban who rejects the violence and hatred completely is considered a radical and if a radical is innately dangerous and bad, they should therefore be considered a threat to humanity and dangerous and bad. However that seems a bit, silly.. and wrong? Radicalism itself, rejecting the status quo and seeking to promote change-- is not innately dangerous or bad in any way.

Wanting to destroy entire groups of people simply for a power trip or to make your in group feel superior or give you a sense of purpose? THAT is scary and bad. But I really think people are totally missing the root of the problem when they think it is as simple as "radicalism" or "extremism" themselves explain the source of the harmfulness of these movements.

Abolishing slavery was a radical movement but it was not an evil or bad movement. I guess depending on your definition of such.
posted by xarnop at 11:40 AM on March 5, 2015


I plead a poor word choice, then - you're absolutely right that abolitionists were considered "radical" and so "radicalism" isn't a good choice.

I'd substitute "fundamentalism", but there I run the risk of confusing people into thinking I"m talking exclusively about Christianity. Any other suggestions?

And, you do understand my larger point, yes?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:47 AM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


So what is it that fuels the move from "being a jerk" to being a member of a group of organized murderers? And why do jerks seem to be the worst that some groups (Sox uh, Cowboys fans) seem to produce, while other groups often churn out killers by the dozens? Seems worth addressing more than merely taking extreme positions does.
posted by jfuller at 11:49 AM on March 5, 2015


*blush* That's another poor word choice on my part, then - I was classifying being a murderer under the category of "jerk". Because - well, they kind of are, yeah?

Let me try again - this article was comparing the means by which two men of very different ideologies got to the point when they were committing violence in the name of their chosen ideology, and it found that the process by which they went from being "guy who just thought nasty things" to "violent guy" was similar, even though their ideologies are different.

And that went along with my own position that if you run into someone who's using a given ideology as an excuse to be a jerk, that that is not that ideology's fault - rather, the person was a jerk already, and they're just using the ideology as an excuse for it.

At the end of the day, this seems to underscore that it isn't any one or another ideology that "causes" people to be either a violent guy or a jerk - rather, it is the fault of (in the first place) someone being encouraged to commit Violence For A Cause, or (in the second) someone just happening to be a jerk.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:00 PM on March 5, 2015


Needs moar snakes, and cholera.
posted by spitbull at 12:04 PM on March 5, 2015


So what is it that fuels the move from "being a jerk" to being a member of a group of organized murderers?

This question is actually being studied scientifically...

"Two studies that he published last month suggest that extremism arises, in part, when membership in a group reinforces deeply held ideals, and an individual’s identity merges with the group’s (S. Atran et al. Cliodynamics 5, 41–57; 2014; S. Atran et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111,17702–17703; 2014). “They can be low-lifes, but once they lock into these values it doesn’t matter, because they become heroic warriors,” says Atran."
posted by mrbigmuscles at 12:25 PM on March 5, 2015


There's being radical in that one has stances that differ greatly from the common range, and then there's being radical in that one rejects other's value and life.

It may be prudent to consider why some people become radicals of the second kind, but it is a common tactic to conflate the two to denigrate radicals of the first kind.
posted by halifix at 12:25 PM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Kanewai brings up an interesting point above - the number of young women trying to join ISIS. Well, to become wives for ISIS fighters. My thought, based on nothing but thinking about it, is that it falls into the same area as self-cutting or eating disorders. It's a way for them to both lash out and to gain a feeling of control over themselves and not something based on strong beliefs or ideology. I haven't read much about this yet but would love to see what's been written, if anything, as it does seem to be a pretty new phenomenon, at least in the west.

Just browse #blithe or #thinspo even a little bit on Instagram and it doesn't seem far off from #ISISBRIDE or whatever.
posted by misterpatrick at 12:27 PM on March 5, 2015


Neo-fascism is a strain of sloganeering which governs nothing and no one; neo-fascists champion, with various degrees of shame-faced emendation, an ideology which rose to consequence in the early 1930s and was utterly annihilated less than 15 years later

Hungary, sadly, begs to differ.

I don't see that a neo-fascist need be any more delusional than an islamic fundamentalist to believe that their ideology could become a dominant one; there are strong constituencies for neo-fascist parties in many European countries (such as Golden Dawn in Greece). It would be very easy to imagine a set of circumstances that could bring such parties to power.
posted by yoink at 12:39 PM on March 5, 2015


I believe you find similar qualities described in Under the Banner of Heaven with regards to fundamentalist Mormonism.
posted by plinth at 1:10 PM on March 5, 2015


"And, you do understand my larger point, yes?"
Totally I agree it's hard to find one word terms that encapsulate much larger concepts-- the only reason I think it might be worth examining is that sometimes language plays a role in understanding concepts themselves...

If we're not sure exactly what it is that is driving these movements to become so destructive to innocent beings, it might be worth teasing out so that we can tackle the actual harmful parts that are generating injury to innocent people.

I think there was an article about how oxytocin can create powerful bonding feelings but it can also generate very focused love that only translates to in-family or in-group and not as well to out group. I think if you are lonely the idea of being part of a group that will accept you just because you're "family"- you have the right skin color- rather than that you get good grades or you achieve at xyz is very appealing. In some ways I think the innate desire to be accepted JUST BECAUSE is ok...it's not innately bad. The problem is WHO answers the call and what sinister purposes THEY have up their sleeves.

I also think when people are failed by humanity they tend to start to see humanity in general as the enemy and feel rage toward humans in general. I think the reasons people turn to the dark side of the force are very complex and I don't think there is necessarily a good one word answer for what makes a destructive movement harmful/wrong/etc vs movements ideologies that promote peace and human welfare.

To me, I think the biggest difference is whether you consider ALL HUMANS having welfare and longevity and self determination and needed resources your goal, when possible. We are in a limited reality and when some humans are harming other humans we might not be able to protect both the innocent/ourselves AND those doing the harm but it should be the goal should we have the military capacity for full success.

I also think there is a need to actively challenge religious ideologies that pit one group of humans as superior to the other without any regard to harms principles in opposition to compassion. No one should worship a deity that is not compassionate, whether they exist or not, and if a god or religious texts in encouraging people to violence I think it stands to challenge that religion/deity themselves. This is very hard to do since people often believe in such things without use of logic and if a god(or people who designed a god) rules by terror or threats of hell people will be, well, terrified to question the doctrines. At some point it's good to ask people, do you want to serve tyranny to escape pain or risk death/endure suffering to serving compassion? Compassion should rule any realm and if it's not, we should be part of the force working to make compassion rule.

I do totally get what you mean by the harmful aspect of an ideology, and while I don't think extremism or radicalism capture that, those have been the preferred terms for that force so I get what you mean entirely. I do just think it might be worth teasing out why we use those terms when they might not be the concepts that are actually harmful about these movements.

In terms of compassion/empathy I think people naturally start with themselves, then their family, then tribe, then community, then world at large and it's actually a developmental process to achieve the larger community as part of your innate empathetic reactions. When resources are low (whether physical or emotional), violence and competition tends to naturally rise and I think sometimes people equate violence and competition with safety and security- even though having an ideology that perpetuates ongoing destruction and violence actually reduces prosperity since pro-social co-operation actually conveys survival benefits to a lot of communities/populations.
posted by xarnop at 1:53 PM on March 5, 2015


Radicalization ... aspirations that (1) reject or undermine the status quo

The status quo is all good then and there is no need for radicals?

Time to burn Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" for heat during this last cold snap then.
posted by rough ashlar at 3:07 PM on March 5, 2015


The same process of intense group bonding is used in groups as diverse as the military, fraternities and cults. The process of creating extremists is similar and like cult creation, lies at the extreme end of group processes.

In short, you get disaffected people who feel useless and worthless and present them with a cause where they can be at the center of a movement that will save the world or has some other profoundly meaningful purpose, like spiritual growth.

Then, you isolate them from dissenting views, cut them off from family and friends, put them through extreme ordeals typically involving food deprivation, sleep deprivation, extreme exercise, other forms of pain and take away all their money or other means of escape. During this you overwhelm them with repetition of your message and their importance in carrying out the great cause.

The tougher you are and the more stress you create, the better because cognitive dissonance becomes your friend once people start doing weird stuff for a cause: the more extreme your victims' actions, the more committed they will become because if they start to question, they will now have to revise their entire view of themselves and be at risk of losing the great cause and their entire social life, not to mention financial support.

Doesn't matter what the cause is: the problem doesn't lie there, but in the creation of a person who will do anything to anyone to serve the cause of a group and in leadership of groups that are unethical enough to create such systems without checks on power.
posted by Maias at 3:40 PM on March 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


The Tsarnaev Trial and the Blind Spots in 'Countering Violent Extremism'
Widely described as a “self-radicalized” terrorist, Tsarnaev now serves as a prime example of the type of individual targeted by Countering Violent Extremist (CVE) programs. Yet in fact, Tsarnaev’s life trajectory leading up to the bombing does not resemble the “path to radicalization” identified in CVE frameworks — raising questions about the capacity of these programs to intervene effectively to preempt terrorism. ... CVE models do not usually even discuss political grievances, such as those Tsarnaev repeatedly cited as a motive for his acts.
posted by twirlip at 8:25 AM on March 10, 2015


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